Chapter 12
The black vinyl sign, which was glass-encased and displaying white changeable letters outside of Transfiguration Roman Catholic Church, announced its information in Cantonese, Mandarin, and English. Inside, in a niche ensconced in the right hand wall, the head of a full size statue of St. Rocco was incongruously illuminated with an electric light bulb halo. The Mass of the Resurrection was celebrated in English, and most people in the congregation were of Italian background. The presider at the liturgy was also of Italian descent but had spent many years in Asia as a missionary and now pastored this Chinatown New York City church, dealing with some of the same situations he dealt with in mainland China. Added to the numerous pastoral concerns he had for his flock were issues associated with estrangement from family members who were still living in China, the financial stress of having made the journey here, their struggles to pay back transportation loans, difficulty getting jobs—especially jobs paying a just wage, language problems, and on and on.
The slim, dark complected pastor with silver-gray thinning hair sprinkled the casket with practiced motions; the coffin itself was draped in a snowy white funeral pall. He then incensed the remains of the departed, swinging the smoking thurible in low aromatic circles as he walked around the casket. “Let us make our way now to the cemetery for the burial of our sister in the faith, Annetta. The funeral directors will help to organize the procession when we get outside.” The organ droned as the mourning community got up, genuflected on the right knee, and slowly walked toward the back door of the church. The soloist sang in English an ancient liturgical hymn inviting the angels to lead Annetta into paradise and the church all but emptied, the departed being wheeled out behind the ragged procession of family and friends, followed by two teen-aged altar servers, one girl and one boy, and finally by the priest.
Dr. Chantal Fleur thought about how ethnically different all of this was from her own French-Canadian roots. She had often teased her mother and father for pronouncing the word “out” like the word “oat.” When her family would say the word “aye” in questioning if something was understood or not, Chantal’s mind often conjured up a gaggle of pirates making people walk the plank or shooting cannon balls toward another ship out on the ocean. Her family had emotion to spare, but not of this variety, that erupted like a sputtering teakettle every time someone took a deep breath. What was it her Italian friend from South Philly said one time? It was something about the more weeping and wailing done, the more honor was given to the deceased. In fact, she now remembered, his aunt was a professional mourner. Aunt Tina’s services were engaged right along with the organist and funeral director to mourn at funeral services. Each culture has its own beauty, as well as things a bit difficult to fathom. Graduate school had given her such interesting and wonderful life-long friends.
The funeral Mass itself was also very different from her early recollections. She was still in grammar school then but remembered what was called the “Requiem Mass.” The service was named after the Latin word for rest. Everyone and everything was draped in back, including the casket, priest, and the people. The Latin prayers provided an aura of mystery and, to Chantal’s mind, even more of a barrier between the living and the recently departed.
Her professional empathy today gave way to sympathy from time to time for everyone involved, especially for David. While sympathy, feeling the very emotions of another was acceptable here, it was not acceptable in her clinical practice, especially in the forensic aspect of her work. There empathy, tuning in to the emotions of another and having that person understand that the doctor was indeed well aware of what was being experienced, was much more helpful. The many empirical studies on the outcome of professional psychotherapy and psychological assessment, rooted in hard data, made it abundantly clear. Empathy, not sympathy, was indeed one of the most healing factors in the doctor-patient relationship.
Be that as it may, Chantal had just celebrated a Mass of the Resurrection, replete with “Alleluias” and white vestments. There was none of that in the old days—especially not any female altar servers. Women were not even allowed beyond the altar railing, which used to separate altar and tabernacle from the body of the church, where the worshipping faithful prayed in their pews. She had entered into all of this today with her entire heart, conflicted as her theology and feelings were. Not too bad for a hopeful agnostic!
There were lots of emotions to process. Detective David Gold, who had relocated from New York City to northeastern Pennsylvania after the divorce, was here to reverence the passing of his ex-wife. He had never wanted a divorce--but Annetta did. Her main reason was because she had become ill and increasingly confused and dependent upon others. She had spent the last years of her life in a nursing home. Dave also knew that his overwork and lack of sensitivity to her needs had not allowed them to bond properly, but she was much too good a person to bring that up much. He had always been for grateful for her but he took her goodness for granted. Now the God of compassion can make everything right--as right as anything can be in this basically unjust world.
He quietly whispered the mourner’s Kaddish,3 a mysterious prayer said to have been brought down from heaven by the angels, and a vehicle for bonding heaven to earth through a confidence that no human person can ever disappear or be annihilated when remembered by the God of Israel. Gently rocking his upper body to and fro, David uttered the guttural Hebrew sounds expressing this sacred prayer:
“Let the glory of God be extolled, let His great name be hallowed, in the world whose creation He willed. May His kingdom soon prevail, in our own day, our own lives, and the life of all Israel, and let us say: Amen.
“Let His great name be blessed for ever and ever.
“Let the name of the Holy One, blessed is He, be glorified, exalted, and honored, though He is beyond all the praises, songs, and adorations that we can utter, and let us say: Amen.
“For us and for all Israel, may the blessing of peace and the promise of life come true, and let us say: Amen.
“May He who causes peace to reign in the high heavens, let peace descend on us, on all Israel, and let all the world, and let us say: Amen.”
The solemn trip to the cemetery felt like it threw the detective’s emotions into a food processor. Ragged bits of anger, confusion, self-doubt, relief, and peace swirled around and around within him. This was all too new to David and it made him feel very vulnerable and confused. Much of the emotional upheaval had been triggered by his relationship with Chantal, he reasoned. Their relationship had started off in a very stormy fashion but was now, for the most part, peaceful and easy. Given that, both were still holding back somewhat because of their spiritual differences and because of the history of love and pain woven into both of their lives. Some of that history came from personal experiences; the remainder came from what they dealt with day in and day out in their professional lives. Dave had to admit that even the turbulence in their exchanges had eventually become enjoyable and a source of insight about himself and life. Chantal once told him that the word “emotion” comes from a root word meaning “to push” or “to move.” Dave was still a novice in the school of relationships but was learning—mostly by being pushed and moved by his emotions and by his growing friendship with this new lady in his life. Chantal picked up a few things along the way as well because of her relationship with him. He often light-heartedly consoled himself with that thought.
The burial day itself seemed rather anticlimactic after the years of marriage, the illness, the funeral liturgy itself, and then the brief interment ceremony at the cemetery. Everyone was invited to a lower eastside restaurant after the burial but David felt out of place and torn between two worlds. He was at the burial of his ex-wife, accompanied by the woman that many could perceive as a current girlfriend. Chantal was beginning to be able to read his mind: “Would you like to skip the luncheon and just take a leisurely walk through Chinatown—well, as leisurely as anyone can walk in Chinatown?”
David’s sagging spirit was buoyed up by Chantal’s energetic words and attitude. “What a great idea, Chantal, thanks so much for suggesting it. I would be delighted to walk on the wild side. Now if only I can find some enjoyable company to walk along with me.” She punched him in the arm—a little harder than he had expected, and his one foot slipped over the curb and into a gutter. “It’s a good thing you’re a woman, woman, or else…. Scratch that. It’s a good thing you’re a person, person. How’s that?”
Chantal just rolled her expressive eyes upward. “A cemetery is no place to have an argument. It makes me feel like I need to hold back. Besides, we are beginning to the attract attention of several groups of mourners. Let’s get out of here.”
“You’re changing too you know,” Dave shot back.
“What are you talking about?” his cemetery companion asked.
“Nothing that you can grasp yet. Let’s get out of here.”
They drove back to the area close to Transfiguration Church, where the Mass of the Resurrection had been celebrated for Annetta, and parked in a lot. Payment for parking was a little pricey but it was well worth every penny. David and Chantal meandered the mostly narrow streets of Chinatown, sometimes on the sidewalks and sometimes in the street, depending on whether the foot traffic or the car traffic was more of a challenge. Some streets were indeed enormous but most were tiny and glutted with people, traffic, barrels of vegetables, and fish flopping in tubs of water on the pavements.
Chantal chattered on in hopes of continuing the lifting of David’s spirit, which began as they bantered at the cemetery. “Don’t walk too quickly or we’ll wind up in ‘Little Italy’ and then we will have to have pasta for lunch instead of chicken feet. Just kidding—nothing could get me to eat chicken feet! It’s fascinating to think about how these neighborhoods have changed over the years. Transfiguration Church was once replete with Italian Catholics and now it’s totally Chinese, except for the funerals of former members of the parish. I hope St. Rocco speaks Mandarin or Cantonese, otherwise he might as well go to the old Latin Mass. Annetta was given a real send off—they had Rocco’s halo lit up for the occasion.”
David smiled pensively.
They passed one of the scores of Chinese medicinal herb shops, and Chantal asked her friend to go in with her. “Everybody’s talking about herbs these days, Chantal. We can see that stuff in a drug store any time we want.”
“Those are primarily Western herbs you see displayed and advertised, Dave. This is entirely different, and is based on five thousand years of medical application in China and now, to some degree, even in the West. There are numerous Chinese researchers and pharmacists working at coming to some understanding as to why some of these herbs work as well as they do. Francis has studied with them in Chinese hospitals on several occasions. Chinese medicine doctors almost never give one herb for a condition; they work with groups of them, called ‘formulas.’ The properties of the herbs create a synergistic effect aimed at the root cause of the patient’s symptoms, which are often looked upon as the ‘branches’.”
Chantal won, and they entered the shop where they were immediately aware of the aroma in the spotless building. It smelled like a blend of many scents, not flowery or sweet, maybe a little like a hayfield during pollen season. Large round glass jars filled with raw herbs of various shapes, sizes, and colors were lined up on a long counter and there were several places where old-fashioned looking scales were being used by people in white coats who were taking handfuls of the herbs from the jars and placing them on the scale. These white-coated people, Chantal and Dave later learned, were filling raw herb prescriptions from Chinese medicine doctors for patients. Patent herbal formulas, already prepared in factories and then shipped out to pharmacies, lined the shelves of the long room. Boxes and bottles of every sort, containing pills, potions, powders, salves, and plasters imbedded with medicine, were everywhere. They strolled the room for a while when out of the blue Chantal pointed to a red and white box with gold lettering on it. “I recognize that medicine, Dave.”
She picked up the box and read aloud: “Circular Active Formula.” Then Chantal attempted to pronounce the Chinese version of the name of the herbal formula: “Leiyunshang Huoluodan, something like that. I had a patient, this goes back a few years now, who came to me for a psychological assessment. Many people still call assessment ‘psych testing’ but that implies passing or failing so we try to avoid the word ‘testing.’ Assessment is more like taking a snapshot of a person, including strengths along with areas where psychological growth might be helpful.
“Back to my story. This woman was in line for a high-powered job of some sort and her company wanted the assessment; so did she. The patient had a marked physical weakness on her right side from some type of neurological situation, and she would also fatigue easily. One of my recommendations, written at the end of her assessment report, was that she consults with Abbot Francis, with his Chinese medicine hat on. Part of his treatment was to prescribe this medicine for her. He showed it to me once after he met with her. Inside this rectangular box are about ten smaller boxes, each containing a white wax ball, less than an inch in diameter. You carefully pull the two halves of the ball apart like a little plastic Easter egg and inside is the medicine, wrapped in plastic wrap.
“The formula is in the form of a little round blob, the color and consistency of tar. Look here at this list on the box. I remember that one of the ingredients in this formula is myrrh. The reason I remember that is because the three kings in the Gospel story took gold, frankincense, and myrrh with them as gifts when they visited the baby Jesus in Bethlehem on the first Christmas. The gold is thought by some scripture scholars to represent Christ as a royal person or a king; the frankincense is still used today in Chinese medicine to treat pain caused by traumatic injury, swelling, and stagnant blood conditions and indicating the future passion of Christ. The myrrh resin was used as a burial spice in the time of Christ. The women who came to attend to his dead body on the morning of the resurrection brought that with them, only to find the tomb empty.”
“Very interesting, but cut to the chase, Chantal, what ever happened to the lady with the weakness on her right side and the stints of fatigue?”
“The medicine helped her greatly, Dave. Her right side became stronger and her bouts of fatigue lifted. I think Francis gave her some sort of tonic to take after the initial medicine for her physical weakness. Anyway, she was able to accept the promotion at work because of her increased vitality and health. Sometimes there are happy endings.”
“Is this where Francis gets his Chinese medicine for his patients?” the detective asked.
“Oh no, Dave, when people ask Francis if his medications are from China, he says that he will only use the most authentic and traditional Chinese formulas available—he gets his via UPS from Brooklyn!”
“By the way, I took some of this Circular Active Formula myself once, out of curiosity and with Francis’ permission. It tastes foul--mainly because of the myrrh I think. It was like taking a handful of incense out of the container used at the Mass of the Resurrection this morning and eating it. My ears rang a little and my head throbbed after I ingested the stuff. I can see how it could clear out the head and help things to circulate, which is its medicinal purpose. If you chop up the little blob, or soak it in warm water for a while it might be easier going down, but you know me, I just grabbed the thing and chewed and swallowed.”
“How very unlike you,” Dave commented with the utmost dryness.
They were on one of the large streets at a very busy intersection and a yellow and red temple loomed up on the left side of the street. The place had probably been a movie theater in the old days but was now a well-kept Chan Buddhist temple. She couldn’t resist it: “Is this the kind of place you mean when you talk about going to temple, David?”
“Well, our roots are middle eastern, Chantal, not this far east. Actually, both of our roots are middle eastern. You were raised as a ‘spiritual Semite.’ Your roots are Judeo-Christian. Let’s have a look at this other type of temple anyway, shall we?”
Chantal continued to marvel at her friend’s depth of knowledge about spiritual matters and wondered about other facets of Dave’s personality yet to be explored.
The couple entered the spacious and welcoming lobby of the temple and a smiling Asian man wearing wire-framed glasses, sitting in a wheelchair behind a counter, greeted them. There was a little shrine in the lobby area to Kwan-Yin, the Goddess of Compassion. Water gurgled from a four-foot high waterfall that was surrounded by silk and living flowers in another corner. A young Asian woman, with long shiny black hair pulled back in a ponytail, held three incense sticks between her joined hands and was bowing before the statue. She was praying to the Goddess of Compassion. This representation of the deity symbolized and brought to life for her people the great compassion of God. They watched for a while in peaceful stillness, David praying for the peace of all people, especially for peace of the Middle East, and Chantal reflexively reciting a Hail Mary, the Catholic Christian mantra she had learned so long ago.
The bonding spiritual pilgrims next entered the large temple area itself. A huge bright golden Buddha with eyes of great understanding was smiling at them benevolently. He was about the size of a house and rested on the stage of the former theater. On the two side walls was the life story of Siddhartha, later know as the Buddha, presented in a series of drawings framed in slender black wood strips. The various drawings and captions told the story of this wise man and his legacy. Both of the pilgrims here thought it a trace reminiscent of the fourteen Stations of the Cross in a Catholic or Episcopal church. Chantal had an abreactive experience, a psychological healing which puts some old issue into proper place within the psyche. Hers was triggered by the present experience she was having.
One of her “issues” with the institutional Church is, in her perception, the emphasis on suffering and death, but she now remembered her friend Francis explaining that contemporary worshipping communities often added a fifteenth station to the original fourteen “freeze framed” events from the passion and death of Jesus called “stations.” Instead of ending at the crucifixion, the journey along the via dolorosa could now end at the Resurrection. Thoughts of the Mass of the Resurrection she had celebrated with the others earlier—all are celebrants now, laity as well as clergy. The priest is the presider at the liturgy but all celebrate it. Death and resurrection, suffering and healing, yin and yang--all of this is the stuff of life in every culture.
“David, you know I’m an agnostic, but I can’t resist that incense and the possibility of the Divine existing. I’m going to light some incense and offer it to the Buddha the way the other people here are doing. Care to join me?”
“My religious beliefs are rooted in Judaism but I do respect other traditions and will happily join you.” Should I be wearing my yarmulke?
“Being of Catholic background and all, you are more used to the incense thing than I am, so I’ll follow your lead,” reverently responded the middle-aged man who was mellowing more by the day. Even his body was going through a metamorphosis. He had lost some weight in recent months and was down to about two hundred pounds, which fit his just over six foot frame a little better than the extra thirty pounds he had carried with him in the past.
They went up to what Catholics would call a “kneeler” and did what they had seen others do. They each took three sticks of incense and lit them from the oil lamps burning in front of the Buddha. They placed them between their joined palms and bowed three times. Then they took the incense sticks and placed them in the sand pit at the feet of the Buddha where the incense would continue burning. Each stayed and prayed quietly for a few moments. She didn’t know chapter and verse and thus wouldn’t make a very good Baptist, but Chantal whispered a line from Psalm one hundred forty-one for David and the Buddha to hear: “Let my prayer rise as incense before you, O Lord, and may the raising up of my hands be like an evening oblation.” When they stood up to walk out, Dave asked Chantal about her experience in the temple.
“It was very interesting and peaceful, but you can’t have incense without lots of people coughing in the congregation; it just doesn’t work, I mean it’s simply part of the deal.” David just smiled, knowing that this was a reference to Chantal’s Catholic upbringing and experience. It was deeply a part of her. Even though she continued to struggle with some of the teachings and practices of the Church, many of which were presented in a more understanding and understandable way by recent changes in the Church, she respected the Church very much.
In this sacred place, and with the earlier church experience at Transfiguration, their talk drifted back to some months earlier when they helped solve the murders of a rather progressive Catholic woman theologian and another religious leader who was quite different from the theologian. Their link was Abbot Francis de Sales, who helped to keep the situation from becoming too volatile, risking his own neck, and almost being murdered himself in the process. Francis was an interesting mix. He was clearly rooted in his own tradition and Christ-centered, yet had a sort of “room enough for all” philosophy about the world and spirituality. His spiritual theology was not a hybrid and he did not believe that one could simply interchange religions, but Francis celebrated all that people shared in common and respected what was different from him. The Christian monk agreed with the Dalai Lama regarding mixing religions. He teaches that: “You can’t put a yak’s head on a sheep.” Francis’ little monastery existed for the glory of God and the good of others, it was as simple as that.
Chantal broke their mutual reverie. “I wonder how our brothers and sisters at the Salesian Monastery are doing. We haven’t been there in a while. It might me nice to visit them under happy circumstances.”
David, as he came out of his trance-like state, said that he was wondering very much the same thing. “They’ve been on my mind lately, along with everything else that’s been happening. If we don’t hear from them soon, why don’t we just pay a little visit?”